Margot Robbie is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood today, but it wasn't that long ago
that she was a complete unknown. From her wholesome childhood in rural Australia to
her adventures in the sky, this is what her life was like before she broke big.
Robbie started life as a country girl, as she grew up on her grandparents' farm
on Australia's Gold Coast. Some of her happiest early memories include
hunting wild pigs and riding around on motorbikes. In 2016, she told Vanity Fair,
"People always want to know, 'Did you have kangaroos outside your bedroom window?' I'm like,
'Yes, but none of my other friends did.' Or 'Did you have snakes running around?' And again,
'Yes, in our house, but this isn't an Australian thing.'"
Through all of the fame and fortune, Robbie has maintained a strong bond with her childhood
best friends, all 16 of them. In a 2017 interview, she revealed,
"We're all so tight-knit. They are still my best friends today. We've known each other
since preschool and we're still the best of friends, so that's an incredibly special thing.
Everyone always says we've never met a group like you. It's crazy."
The same goes for the actress' family. Her close relationship with her mother
Sarie Kessler made headlines in Australia when Robbie paid off the mortgage on her mom's house,
which was one of her first moves after making it big. At the time, her mom said,
"I am immensely proud of her. She is a fine young woman and
she is directly focused and she sets goals and achieves them."
While Robbie's relationship with her mother is strong, she isn't very close with her father.
Doug Robbie reportedly walked out on his family when Margot was barely out of diapers. In 2016,
when Harper's Bazaar asked her what qualities she shares with her father,
she seemed reluctant to discuss the topic, as she responded,
"None. Nothing. I'm not like him at all."
When Robbie got married later that year to British director Tom Ackerley,
she refused to let her dad walk her down the aisle. Instead, her mom gave her
away. But not all of the Robbie children share Margot's animosity towards their dad. In 2015,
her brother Lachlan posted a photo of him and his dad on Instagram along with the caption,
"Happy Father's Day to this old boy.
Might not have the normal family but you did give an education and help when I needed it."
Margot Robbie began earning her keep at a very young age, as she landed her first job in a local
restaurant when she was just 10 years old. She was hired to polish cutlery
and later advanced to chopping up vegetables and waiting tables. That was one of many jobs
that eventually bankrolled her acting career. In 2014, she told Vanity Fair,
"I've worked three jobs at a time. I worked in a pharmacy, an office,
at a warehouse, did catering. I was always trying to save up money."
Her last regular job was in 2007,
when she worked as a Subway sandwich artist in Melbourne. She bragged to Vanity Fair,
"I was really good at it. I make a mean Subway. The trick is to spread
everything evenly out and cut it so well that there is never a bad bite."
Robbie left the sandwich shop when she landed a part on the Aussie soap opera Neighbours.
Six months after that, Subway reached out to cast her in a commercial, which
paid her about 20 times as much as she ever earned while making sandwiches.
As a nineties kid, Margot Robbie went through her teenage years at the height of the Harry Potter
phenomenon, and she serves as proof that Hogwarts hysteria made it all the way to Australia.
During a 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she admitted to being such a "massive Harry
Potter nerd" that she spent her 13th birthday at home reading The Order of the Phoenix. Then
the host revealed an embarrassing photo of a young Robbie to prove just how much she wasn't kidding.
"I'm wearing glasses, which I didn't actually need. I have 20/20 vision, and I lied
to get glasses so I could look like Harry Potter."
And that wasn't the only time that Robbie talked about her Harry Potter obsession.
In 2018, she confessed to Harper's Bazaar that her friends hired a
Harry Potter-themed stripper for her bachelorette party. She recalled,
"He had all the Harry Potter phrases and innuendos. I was so touched;
it was really such a thoughtful thing to do. They know me so well."
Robbie has also admitted that she's been reading all seven Harry Potter books on
a continuous loop for years as an alternative to meditation.
It's apparently all a bit too much magic for her husband, though,
as he's not a fan of her getting one or two hours of reading in every single night before bed.
Robbie transitioned from her Harry Potter period into a much darker era,
all in the span of 12 months. She left magic for mosh pits as she
entered into a heavy metal phase. During a 2016 appearance on The Tonight Show,
she told Jimmy Fallon that she was stoked to be on his show the same night as Metallica.
"I had a, um, a real like, like heavy metal phase
when I was like 14, and I like dyed my hair black and I'd only cut it with a razor blade."
Robbie then listed the bands she used to listen to, like Silverstein, Bullet for My Valentine,
and Slipknot. It should be noted that Slipknot's fans refer to themselves as
Maggots, which is appropriate considering that Robbie's childhood nickname was "Maggot."
She saw Slipknot live in Australia while she was working on Neighbours,
and she was famous enough at the time that even the most hardened Maggots recognized her.
Some even seemed more interested in her show than the concert they were attending.
"And like these huge guys with like tattoos and like piercings everywhere would be like,
'Is Bridget's baby really dead?!' And I'd be like-"
Australia has no shortage of options when it comes to extreme sports, and Robbie has
dabbled in more than a few of them over the years. For example, to mark her 18th birthday,
she jumped out of a plane with her best friend and boyfriend at the time.
She did the same thing again on her next birthday and had planned to turn this into an
annual tradition until her career got in the way. But she still manages to get her adrenaline fix
when she's back in her home country, whether through snorkeling or surfing, the latter of
which she did regularly before jetting off to Los Angeles. In a 2017 interview, she said,
"Even though I lived way out in the mountains, out in the sticks, I could still be out there
surfing in 20 minutes. It’s such a cool landscape and so easy to get everywhere."
While Robbie always hoped to have a career in the performing arts, her initial dream
job wasn't acting. Instead, she was into the art of illusion. In 2016, she told Vanity Fair,
"When I was little, I thought I was going to be a magician. I had tricks and thought they
were genius. I didn't decide, 'I'm going to be an actress.' I didn't know that was a job.
I thought that only happened to people born in Hollywood."
After finding fame, Robbie got the chance to get up close and personal with one of the world's most
famous magicians, as she appeared on David Blaine's TV special Beyond Magic. She was
rendered speechless when he correctly guessed a random word that she'd chosen in her mind.
"That's not only weird, but really embarrassing as well."
Robbie also got to learn the art of the steal from Vegas-based magician Apollo Robbins while
preparing for the 2015 con-artist movie Focus. She told The Independent that year,
"The most terrifying thing is having the confidence to actually execute a lift […] It's
so ballsy to actually steal something off someone when you're looking at them in the eye."
When she was 16, Robbie moved to Melbourne, the heartland of her home country's TV industry.
She had just a single student film on her resume and was essentially homeless.
So she relied on friends to put a roof over her head while she settled in,
being careful not to overstay her welcome at any one place.
Once on her feet, she started cold-calling like crazy. In 2016, she told Vanity Fair,
"I called every day, and, eventually, one day, they put me through to Jan Russ,
a producer for Neighbours [...] I went in and she was like, 'How old
are you?' 'Seventeen.' And she says, 'We're casting for a 17-year-old girl right now.'"
Within weeks, Robbie made her debut on Neighbours as motor-mouthed Donna
Freedman. She then immediately set her sights on another goal,
as she wanted to follow in the footsteps of the many Australian actors who had used Neighbours
as a stepping stone towards Hollywood. Around that time, she told student magazine S-Press,
"I've got big, big dreams for the future. I want to go to L.A. and be a massive actor over there."
Considering that she's now a two-time Oscar nominee with a gorgeous Los Angeles home,
we'd say goal accomplished!
"Darling Margot, all love to you from everyone at Neighbours."
"We're so proud of you and everything that you've achieved."
Robbie's first gig after quitting Neighbours and making it in America was in 2011 as a flight
attendant on the ABC period drama Pan Am. Alas, that show was canceled after one season before
it had the chance to really take off. She then nabbed a role in the Richard Curtis-directed
rom-com About Time, but she was still looking for a bigger opportunity to prove herself.
So she sent an audition tape to Martin Scorsese, who was casting for The Wolf of Wall Street,
even though she thought there was zero chance that she'd hear back. She later told Harper's Bazaar,
"I get home at six in the morning to all these missed phone calls and my team is saying, 'You
are on a plane in a couple of hours to New York to read with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio.'"
The audition didn't start off too well for Robbie,
though, as she was caught off-guard by DiCaprio's ad-libbing. Fearing she was
letting a life-changing role slip away, she decided to do some ad-libbing of her own.
Or maybe "ad-hitting" would be a better way to describe it. As she told it to Harper's Bazaar,
"I walk up really close to his face and then I'm like, 'Maybe I should kiss him,
when else am I ever going to get a chance to kiss Leo DiCaprio,
ever?' But another part of my brain clicks and I just go - Whack! I hit him in the face,
and then I scream, 'F--- you!' And that's not in the script at all."
Amazingly, Scorsese and DiCaprio both loved it.
In 2019, Robbie took her mother to the Cannes Film Festival, which was a real
"pinch-me" moment for the actor. The way she sees it, bringing her mom along for the ride now that
she's rich and famous is the least she can do. The two have always been close, but that doesn't mean
Robbie's always been the perfect daughter. In a 2017 interview with London's Evening Standard,
she admitted that she and her siblings often pushed their luck. As she put it,
"We weren't easy kids. We didn't make it easy for mum."
Sometimes, it was Robbie's can-do attitude that led to friction. As she recalled,
"When I was five I was watching my mum put spread on my sandwich for school and I was saying,
'It's not going to the edges,' and she was like, 'If I am not doing it right, do it yourself.'"
That was all Robbie needed to hear. From that moment forward,
she started making her own lunch. As she explained,
"If I wanted something a certain way I just did it myself. Mum says that sums me up.
I'm still trying to make it up to her."
By this point, we're pretty sure Robbie's mom has indeed forgiven her. Not only did she pay off the
mortgage on her childhood home, she later bought her mom a brand new house in Queensland in 2019.
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